Canadian bus journey

Home, home on the range … where the deer and the antelope play … because they have more sense to stay and play, rather than catching a Greyhound bus across the Canadian prairies.

Can someone please tell me: “What the f*ck was I thinking when I thought it was a good idea to buy a 30 day bus pass for Canada and USA travel?”

Well, I know I want to see the vast scenery - but there are limits.

OK, it is a good idea in the Rockies and British Columbia and some of Alberta where the scenery is superb and it is a windy, mountainous journey I would think twice about driving through myself. Now, that is a good plan.

The rest of Alberta and Saskatchewan are a dead loss of acres and acres of softly undulating wheat farms and the odd oil rig.

Manitoba and Ontario start to get interesting again with lots of pines trees and lakes, but is still quite flat.

Thinking I will dip out of Canada at Calgary and then Greyhound it to Chicago USA to avoid the prairies sounds like a good plan. Unfortunately, Greyhound has other ideas about that.

So as a consequence, spending over 55 hours on a bus to get from Calgary to Toronto, the only exit point in Canada other than Vancouver, really sucks.

I will never travel more than say five hours on a bus … ever, ever again.

I must have been OUT - OF - MY - MIND to do this. An hour of seeing the Canadian prairies and farming lands is enough – not 30 hours or so in that region.

I will be writing (and trying to flog) a travel article about bussing it across Canada called “Greyhound training” as I have picked up quite a few strategies to try to make the journey less unpleasant – if that is possible. So, can’t write too much here until after it gets published in order to be providing unpublished content.

WILDLIFE
And for all of that continuous 55 hours of bus journey, I saw:
> Millions of cows
> An antelope – one stinking lousy antelope
> A wolf or coyote – well, actually I didn’t see it, but the bus had to brake to avoid it before it slunk off into the night …
> An elk – same as above situation …
> A mosquito carrying off a man.

I didn’t even see a stinking prairie gopher at any of the stops and they are a pest in Canada.

SECURITY
Some Greyhound stops are more thorough than others about security. They want to make sure you don't have any fun by taking alcohol on board - and in the case of Winnipeg they go over you with a metal detector to make sure you don't have any weapons. Evidently a few years ago some dude decapitated some poor passenger with a sword - no joke!

Just found a link about this: Bus Beheading

TORONTO
Arrived in Toronto last night at 7pm as the bus was running late.

Heading out at 8.30pm to find food and wine. By the time I found a bottle shop it was closed (9pm) so then my only option was to buy some food where they sold wine. Had a great pesto chicken meal and chips and two glasses of wine. Blew my budget but didn't care - a girl can only go so many days eating fast food and snack foods and no alcohol.

Heading out in two hours to go to Niagara Falls for two hours and then on to Rochester, New York State. YAY! Out of Canada.

COMPUTER PROBLEMS
My laptop is really having heart attacks and couldn't get it to work last night at all. Been doing all sorts of things to get it going quite a lot, but last night it just wouldn't fire up. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and I think the warranty expires this month while I am travelling and don't have any documentation to present to anyone to get it looked at.

PS I miss my cats even more (is that possible?) after talking to a kindly old 76 year old woman who sat next to me for one leg of the journey and was looking forward to seeing her cat after only being away for a few days. It seems quite a few years ago this Siamese turned up in her yard and refused to leave. For half a year she didn’t feed or encourage it, and only condescended to provide a cardboard box for it during the winter snows. And still it remained in her yard. So after that winter she allowed it inside and it has been a faithful companion ever since.